He heard a sharp chorus outside and, feeling what it meant, sent his last word: "Good-by." From three sides of the open ground around the building the Indians were riding down upon him. Firing as fast as he could with any accuracy, he darted from window to window, reaching the west window last. As he looked out he saw up the valley the smoke of the approaching train and understood from the fury of his enemies that they, too, had seen it. But the sight of the train now completely unnerved him. To lose his life with help a few moments away was an added bitterness, and he saw that the relief train would be too late to save him. He fired the last cartridge in his hot revolver at the circling braves and, as he reloaded, the Indians ran up on the platform and threw themselves against the door. Fiendish faces peered through the window-panes and one Indian smashed a sash in with a war club. Bucks realized that his reloading was useless. The cartridges were, in fact, slipping through his fingers, when, dropping his revolver, he drew Bob Scott's knife and backed up against the inner office door, just as a warrior brandishing a hatchet sprang at him. CHAPTER XII Before Bucks had time to think, a second Indian had sprung through the open window. A feeling of helpless rage swept over him at being cornered, defenceless; and, expecting every instant to be despatched with no more consideration than if he had been a rat, he stood at bay, determined not to be taken alive. For an instant his mind worked clearly and with the rapidity of lightning. His life swept before him as if he were a drowning man. In that horrible moment he even heard his call clicking from the despatcher. Of the two Indians confronting him, half-naked and shining with war-paint, one appeared more ferocious than the other, and Bucks only wondered which would attack first. He had not long to wait. The first brave raised a war club to brain him. As Bucks's straining eye followed the movement, the second Indian struck the club down. Bucks understood nothing from the action. The quick, guttural words that followed, the sharp dispute, the struggle of the first savage to evade the second and brain the white boy in spite of his antagonist--a lithe, active Indian of great strength who held the enraged warrior back--all of this, Bucks, bewildered, could understand nothing of. The utmost he could surmise was that the second warrior, from his dress and manner of authority perhaps a chief, meant to take him alive for torture. He watched the contest between the two Indians until with force and threats the chief had driven the warrior outside and turned again upon him. It was then that Bucks, desperate, hurled himself knife in hand at the chief to engage him in final combat. The Indian, though surprised, met his onset skilfully and before Bucks could realize what had occurred he had been disarmed and tossed like a child half-way across the room.